Exsanguination
by Morrigain Sangre
Summary: The new Grey Warden is many things - beautiful, fearless, ruthless, really quite terrifying - but 'his' was never one of them. Alistiar/Fem!Surana, with some implied Zevran/Fem!Surana. Rated for violence, agnst and sexual shennanigans. Now complete.
1. Chapter 1

The new Grey Warden is an elf.

And a mage.

And a _girl._

The first doesn't bother him; the second, not-quite-Templar that he is, sets his teeth on edge. Mages are something to be _watched, _or hunted, or heckled by (that's him: Alistair, Grey Warden, king's bastard, and mage-baiting delivery boy). They are not someone to fight _with, _back to back, with the smell of burnt Darkspawn flesh and the taste of lightning under his tongue. It will take weeks before he gets used to the hair-raising feel of the Veil being ripped to pieces around him, before he doesn't jump like a schoolboy at every little wisp of a spell.

But, alright, a mage. Unnerving as it may be, it's still familiar. He _knows_ mages. It is even familiar enough to be forbidden. He is breaking one of the cardinal rules, after all: _do not steal cheese from the larder, do not take the Maker's name in vain_ and _do not fraternize with the mages_. It is _forbidden. _So much so that it would make him feel giddy, except that she is a _girl. _And the word 'fraternize' feels wrong.

What's the right word?

Sister-ize?

Womanize?

Very, very wrong.

He doesn't know _woman. Woman _is something even more foriegn and forbidden, like the Arlessa, wide false-smiling eyes and impeccably painted lips, all honey-venom perfume and _frost_; or like the Lay Sisters, who (drunken jokes about nothing-under-the-robes-but-what-the-Maker-gave-them aside) are _so _very far out of reach that even the thought makes him cringe. _Girl _is something else too. The new Warden is a _girl _for her size (he could pick her up in one hand, probably; she's all skinny and pointy, not just around the ears), but no mere girl could shove her hand over a hurlock's face, biting her lip in concentration as she smothered the gnashing mouth and curled glowing fingers into its eyes until he feels the magic _catch _and the creature just...just..._explodes_, gore and limbs everywhere so that he ends up wearing a hunk of liver as a hat, and the new not-girl not-woman Warden doesn't even _blink_.

(He makes a joke about the explode-a-spell later, on the way back from the Wilds. "We could make it a business! Liver-hats, spleen-hats, whole ribcages for special occasions, make a statement at court by wearing a hurlock on your head...No? Bring in a little extra money for the Wardens, get the word out? No?" _She _laughs; he can't quite tell if she really means it or no, but at least she _laughs._ The others just look retrospect, what with the Joining a few minutes later and all _that, _he regards it as another spectacular piece of bad timing.)

It's only later, as he waits for her to wake up from her Joining, that he can put _elf _and _mage _and _girl _aside and actually _look _at her. The blood on the ground and spattering her robes and on the corner of her mouth is red, and her lips are red, and her hair is even redder. He finds himself wondering, idly, if her hair had ever caught fire; it is something that young mages tend to do in his experience, and her hair is so very _red _that he thinks it might burn for a while before someone noticed. With his luck it would be _him, _and then he'd have to pick her tiny elven self up in one hand and shove her head in the water bucket, and then she may very well kill him. Oh, Maker. He does not fancy ending up as little bits on someone's head.

"Worried, Alistair?" He jumps nearly a foot in the air. It is Duncan, of course. Which practically means _father, _all simple and vaguely embarrassing, as he tries to think thoughts that are _Warden _and aren't _girl _and _woman _and _long silky red red hair _and –

_Silky?_

Adjectives? _Poetic _adjectives? Where did _that_ come from?

He could kick himself.

"Yes. Er. Worried. I'm a bit worried. I mean –" he is babbling again, and is it just him or does Duncan look slightly amused? Duncan _never _looks amused. He gathers himself. "Shouldn't she be awake by now? It's not like the Harrowing, it doesn't take _hours_, so..."

Duncan _is _amused, for certain. He could just _kick _himself. "Don't trouble yourself, Alistair. She will be fine." He gestures for the younger Warden to walk with him, and they do, away from the blood _red _mage and along the long battlements where they can see and hear the men preparing for battle (and, far away, _feel _the Darkspawn preparing as well. Alistair brushes it off with a shudder and drags himself to _here_). "She came very well recommended," Duncan was saying. "A very talented mage for one just out of her Harrowing. The First Enchanter's star pupil."

"I thought the Circle was refusing to send you any more mages," he says. By _Circle _he means _Chantry, _of course; every Circle mage he knows would jump at half a chance to get out of the Tower (sometimes literally; there is a reason that all of the upper windows are welded shut), and from what little he knows of her the new Warden is no exception.

Duncan sighs. "They did."

"But -?"

"_Alistair," _he says for the third time. "It did not go as I would have liked. The circumstances were...unusual, and –"

"Unusual _how?" _he asked, all brash Templar insistence, and instantly cringes when Duncan turns at the tone in his voice.

"Don'ttrouble yourself," he repeats, and the words are like a door closing. "With your background you will only worry about it, and there are more important things. We can talk after the battle, if you wish. Or you can ask her yourself." And despite the stony voice the amusement is back in his eyes. "You should try _talking _to your fellow Wardens, Alistair. Not merely staring at her as she sleeps."

And he turns about fifteen different shades of red, ending with one as bright as her hair. He protests meekly that this is _not so_, and he resolves to _never _ask her – he'll have a hard enough time looking at _Duncan _now, never mind her, never mind _talking _– and he resolves to shove it out of his mind until after the battle.

Except 'after the battle' never happens.

That is the night the world ends. And _she _is the one fighting her way up the stairs with him, killing Darkspawn after Darkspawn in the place where no Darkspawn should be. _She _is right beside him, hair turned all to fire in the beacon-light as they watch the Teryn's army slink away in the night. Watch the ground below boil like ants, black and wet red. Everything has gone wrong, twisted, _should not be_, he should not _be _here, _she _should not be what she is (mage, woman, Warden, _here, unafraid, beautiful_), there are ten million reasons why both of them should be _dead_. And they all have to do with Duncan, and the last conversation where he had spluttered like a _boy,_ becauseif he hadn't been such a child then maybe he would be down _there _instead of locked up in this tower like a mage watching it all fall to pieces –

That is the night the world ends. And she is right there with him, strong and unafraid and just a little bit ruthless, terrifying really, pure mage, First Enchanter's star pupil, and he forgets that he was ever going to ask _why._


	2. Chapter 2

After that, nothing feels impossible. The new Warden was a mage, Duncan was dead, Loghain had betrayed them all – so, Darkspawn knocking them out to feast on their innards? Naah, no problem. Being rescued from said Darkspawn by the creepy Witch of the Wilds shapeshifted into a giant bird? Tell me something I don't know. Being sent along with said Witch of the Wilds' equally-creepy daughter on an impossible quest to save the world? Child's play.

If he doesn't think of it like this, Alistair rationalizes, he won't be able to move at all. Might as well write a trite little note and go drown himself in the swamp. It would be simple; there's plenty of swamp. So he takes each new impossibility in stride.

It seems _right _that she – _Verissa, _her name is _Verissa, _and he's going to have to use it now that the bitch-witch Morrigan has joined them and _Verissa _isn't the only _she _around – leads their little group. Seniority be damned. He is afraid of too much, afraid of _loss, _afraid of leading itself (the last time he led, people ended up lost in the woods and he was missing his pants – no joke, he tells her, though it did involve ridiculous amounts of ale, and the embarassment of that story is _so _worth hearing her laugh again). Verissa, he's realized, is afraid of nothing. Another impossibility. He accepts it because he _needs _to.

It makes Morrigan make horrible thinly-veiled jokes about his masculinity, but that had always been an easy target anyway.

Verissa leads them onto Lothering, where he expects that they'll find horror and poverty and all sorts of doom. Doomity doom doom. What he doesn't expect is that they _collect _things. Normal people collect trinkets, or cats, or notches on their bedposts; it seems that Grey Wardens collect people. There is a dog (not surprising at all, considering she'd told him about the mabari earlier) with an unholy liking for cheese that rivals his own. She names the dog Fenharel. He thinks it is a bizarre and, frankly, _stupid _name until she tells him it's the name of some Elvish god. "I've always been fascinated by the Dalish," she tells him, scratching the beast behind the ears with startling tenderness. "The lore, the history, the way they practice magic outside the Circle..."

"You don't need to be Dalish for that," Morrigan drawls from her Corner of Creepiness, and he is grateful that they _both _ignore her.

"What would you have named him?" Verissa asks.

"Er...Dog. Very descriptive."

"Riiight. That's much better."

"'Course it is! I am a veritable font of originality, I am."

So he decides that the name isn't stupid_, _merely bizarre, and makes a note to look up _which _god it is the next time they get to a decent library.

Then they collect a Qunari warrior (fairly surprising, considering the man's been in a cage for over a fortnight and should be _dead _by all rights) who calls himself Sten. He does not smile. He does not, in any real sense, talk.

Then they collect a Lay Sister (_very _surprising, considering what little he's gathered of Verissa and Morrigan's thoughts on the Chantry) who calls herself Leliana and talks a _lot_, in an accent that reminds him all too much of the honey-tongued Arlessa.

Then they collect the news that the Grey Wardens have been declared traitors, and that he and Verissa have a price on their heads that is either impressive or horrifying, depending on how you want to look at it, and that they're supposed to be to blame for...everything.

And then Verissa takes the man who delivered the news by the throat and sends lighting through his spine until his skin is charred black and the scent of it chokes the entire room.

And that isn't surprising at all.


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm sorry," she says, much later. They're at camp, and she looks entirely too prim to be sitting on a log in the middle of the wilderness somewhere. The messenger's blood still under her fingernails and everything. She looks out of place, and she also looks awkward – and this startles him. It's the closest to _afraid _that he's seen yet.

He's been brooding about death and Darkspawn and Duncan and doom and all sorts of lovely other things that begin with _D _(Demon? Maybe, with the apostate's eyes crawling down the back of his neck. Danger? Hell, yes. Dancing the Remigold? Oh, the horror). So he just now notices that she's not just _awkward, _she's _fidgeting, _and it is so startling it almost makes him laugh. Doomity doom doom flies out of his mind.

"What for?" he blurts, because he honestly can't remember anymore.

"Snapping at you about Duncan earlier."

Oh, riiiiight. He sighs. Because he's _ always _got to be the gentleman, and because he doesn't want it brought up, he begins to excuse it – _no, not a problem, I'm the one who should be sorry, I was being an ass, we've got more important things to worry about what with Loghain and the Blight and _doom _and all –_

"Stop that," she orders, holding up a hand, and his mouth snaps shut like a trap. It's conditioning. _Do not upset the mages. An upset mage is a dangerous mage. You do not want to end up as a frog-leg entree on toast. _"I was a bitch, alright? He was your friend, and...I'm sorry."

_Creek, creek, creek_, go the crickets, like this is some stage play for the amusement of a sick and twisted audience.

"He was like my father," he answers meekly.

She nods, expression calculating as she sifts through that answer and comes out with _acceptance_, but her eyes don't even soften.

"Have you...ever lost anyone?"

"All the time, in the Tower," she says, disturbingly nonchalant with a nice aftertaste of bitter. "The Templars" _like you _"drag people away in the middle of the night. Sometimes they don't come back. Sometimes they come back..." she hesitates, tongue curled over _Tranquil, _but what comes out of her mouth instead is "dead."

_But that's not the same thing at all._

But then she seems to realize her mistake, suddenly looking much, _much _younger, as if he was the one who would break _her _instead of her blowing him into bite-sized arcane bits. "And my best friend," she adds, eyes on the fire so he can't quite see her expression. It must be _soft. _"We'd been friends since we were children, we did _everything _together, we..._everything_," she repeats. "But Jowan was a bit of a fool. Always had been. Stupid." Her lip curves up, blood red and so very bitter. It dawns on him that he isn't the only one who is angryat someone. "Stupid."

And then – he's not quite sure how it happens – but he is _always _the gentleman, and her hand is right there, pale and forlorn, and it seems like the right thing to do. They are _brothers_ after all. Well, brother and sister. Comrades. Whatever. Grey Warden fraternity and all (but fraternity is _not _the right word, Maker help him). He takes her hand in his own. She looks startled, but he's not a frog yet, so he supposes that means it's _alright_. Her hand is so very small. He traces the lone ridge of scar tissue in the crease between thumb and forefinger, asking "do you want to talk about it?"

She smiles. "Not yet."

And then someone is yelling, and she has to get up in a flurry of rustling feminine skirts because the dog is in Morrigan's underthings _again_, barking with delight, and Alistair is left staring at the fire with his hand limp beside him as if all the life had been sucked out of it, wondering what the _hell _that just was.

"It's an act, you know."

"What?"

"It's an act." The witch is across the fire from him like an apparition (demon – apostate – not to be trusted – strike her down _now _– hand on the hilt of his sword – laughter). Her yellow eyes glow at him like the cat she is so fond of becoming. "Manipulation," she says slowly. She's decided that words longer than three syllables need to be sounded out for him, complete with a baby's lisp. It irks him. "Softening you up. Pulling the wool over your eyes."

"What?"

Morrigan makes a derisive sound that is almost a growl. "Did it not disturb you how she didn't mind killing that messenger today? That wretched excuse of a man? She _smiled _as his eyes turned to jelly and ran down his face – made _you _ill, as I recall."

"Oh, so what? This is where you make another one of your clever jokes about my sword, isn't it? Sword, blubbering little boy, likes to let a woman take the lead – ooh, I'm hurt. I really am."

Her eyes narrow to yellow slits. "'Tis not I you should be worried about."

And then he hears Fenharel's excited barks in the distance, and Verissa's laughter, and the bright, tinkling bursts of ice magic as she makes a pond for the mabari to slip and skate on. The sound is so very _happy_. So far removed from _doom. _"What?"

Morrigan stalks off, mercifully, and he honestly can't remember a thing she just said.


	4. Chapter 4

They make a good team.

The surprise slowly wears off, how natural fighting with her is. He learns to read the flow of her magic, the little catches and tugs at the Veil that his Templar training lets him pick up. It doesn't take long before he is _right there _whenever she freezes an enemy, ready to bash it with his sword pommel and shatter it to bits; it doesn't take long before he is always just _not _there whenever she makes the battlefield crackle and glow with ten different types of fire. He learns to feel the magic in her: when it overflows, or when it rings hollow like an empty well and he has to pick up the slack. It is a process, still. There are bursts he cannot explain, ebbs and flares he does not expect. He tells himself that it keeps life _interesting. _In turn, he teaches her how to duck and weave and _for Andraste's sake get out of the way when someone's charging at you!_

He learns things about her. Starting with the time they first stopped at an inn and she veered down the hall as if drunk, curving steadily sideways until she came face to face with a wall and blinked at it in astonishment.

"I lived in a _circle _my whole life!" she fumed, over his insane giggling. "It's a legitimate reaction! Stupid straight hallways!"

He learns, to his shock and horror, that not having been outside the Circle she barely knows how to buy _bread, _gets ripped off by half the merchants they come across because she thinks 'haggling' has something to do with fish. The first time she enters a proper Chantry she is shocked, seemingly scornful, of the number of people praying. The first time someone calls her _knife-ear _and spits on her she _explodes_. He has to hold her back, pinning her arms behind her back as she spits out all sorts of curses (most of them garbled Orlesian – she and Leliana have bonded over a love of fine shoes), doing everything he can to keep her from reaching into the Fade and blowing the man to pieces. As is, the hem of his pants still catches fire and his eyebrows smolder. There are hours of explaining after that, to the guards who came first and the Templars later, while Alistair repeats over and over _Grey Warden _and _of course she's legal, of course I'm a Templar _and _perfectly controllable _and she sits in on a bench, just _shaking_ with fury, repeating over and over again "Who does he think he is? _Knife-ear? _Who does he think he _is?"_

Leliana soothes her, and Morrigan berates him for not letting them _make an example of the man_, and the dog just growls at whoever gets too close. And that is the end of that. He makes a note to never, _ever _tease her about her height again.

They move on, and she learns. He watches her learn to move gracefully (in a straight line!) in a way the begins to remind him less of an awkward sun-blind bird and more and more of a cat. Watches her Circle-translucent skin take on a spattering of freckles. They pop up like flowers in the spring (he's thinking in poetic terms again: very bad). Once, idly, he wonders how far down the freckles go; then she asks him why he's suddenly turned so _red_.

They travel north, to Denerim. There are Darkspawn here and Darkspawn there and Darkspawn _everywhere, _like it's a damn party, and he jokes that they're there for tea and crumpets. Killing them almost doesn't seem terrifying any more. It's almost _fun, _except when it's _not_, when he's too tired and the mages are too drained and even Leliana's having a hard time mustering more than a faint smile. There are bruises and broken bones and the one horrible, _horrible _time that there was a flurry of magic and he _lost _her, her spell cracking across the sky so that he couldn't _see_, only to find her at the end of her battle in a pool of blood. "Too much," she was saying, shaking, "too much." He couldn't find a wound on her but helped her to her feet just the same, insisted on carryingher back to camp because he was always the gentleman, even while she protested weakly that she was fine and it was just shock, really, and Morrigan made retching noises behind his back.

That's how it is.

He thinks he's done pretty well, himself. Things are going just...just _fantastic, _really, because the little mageling actually _likes _him, isn't terrified of him even though he's half a Templar, actually laughs at his jokes rather that at him (even when some of the jokes fall utterly flat, but hey, he's a Warden, not a court jester). Except...

Except that Verissa likes _everyone_.

Even Morrigan, the witch, the bitch, creepy thing that she is. Were she not so much like the Arlessa Alistair would swear she wasn't actually a woman, that she's some sort of magical construct sent along for his own personal torment. Sometimes he thinks she turns into a mouse and spies on him. Or worse.

Even Sten, whom Verissa has discovered to have a rabid love for cookies, which is just _disturbing_.

Even Leliana, which is actually the most disturbing thing of all. They'll sit next to the fire, the elf practically in the bard's lap, the bard telling her tales of Dalish this and Dalish that and did I tell you about the Dalish? while Verissa gobbles them up like _candy_. They even buy matching _shoes, _for Andraste's sake. Blue. Completely impractical. Women and shoes. It's like some language he doesn't understand. Two redheaded women in matching blue shoes giggling and whispering in that way that women whisper. It's a conspiracy.

Except that Leliana is always _fussing _over Verissa, complaining that being cooped up in a tower has left her with horribly dated fashion sense, hair this and shoes that and _let me straighten that, sweetie, _and _you really should wear something low-cut, we need to show off your figure _and _let me sing you the tale of Beruthiel again_. There are images in the tale of Beruthiel that make Alistair _cringe _and go all red. And there is never any doubt that Leliana is singing it _to _her, looking at the little mage in a way that Chantry sisters were _never _supposed to look. But Verissa always looks completely oblivious. Amused. Content. And deeply oblivious.

Actually, she looks that oblivious about _everything_.

Now there's a sobering thought.

She's been cooped up in that Tower, remember (and while he's heard that mages are promiscuous he's also heard that Darkspawn are just bedtime stories – so much for that). After all, mages can't marry, can't even keep their children, and the Templars are _always _watching which kind of kills that sort of thing, and he can't imagine the Chantry allowing those types of books in their library, so...

This is...not so fantastic.

He continues in this train of thought all the way to Denerim, feeling not-fantastic and kind of deflated and mostly just tired. There are so many _things _in the city. He has spent far too long out in Maker-knows-where sleeping on rocks with the sense of Darkspawn creeping up his spine. It's far too much, and he even forgets to be worried when the women vanish into the crowd for a while.

Until Verissa is back – only it's _not _Verissa, _dear Maker_. Leliana is dragging her through the crowd with that conspiracy glint in her eye. They've bought her some new robe that's all in the grey and silver of her eyes and is _most definitely not _Circle-regulation cut. Circle robes aren't cut that high up the leg (a part of his brain is rationalizing that this will let her move better in battle, but it's still _not fair_). Circle robes don't have _slits _in them halfway up the thigh. Circle robes don't cling like that. Circle robes don't have a nice good-sized teardrop-shaped cutout below the line of her collarbone. He discovers that from this height he can look straight down and see...see...

Oh.

Well.

That answers that, then.

"Alistair?" she asks, and her voice is just a little _too _sweet. A little _too _oblivious. They've bought her gloves, too, grey as well, looking very nice and very, _very _soft as she waves a hand in front of his eyes. "You alright? Care to come back to the land of the living?"

He has to say something, and the first thing out of his mouth is "I didn't know your freckles stopped below the neck."

He is going to _die_.

He is going to _die, _she is going to _kill _him, he is going to end up as a little spattering of ooze on the cobblestones. And Leliana is laughing. And Morrigan is looking at him like he just put the dog's biscuits in the stew again (it was _one time! _It was dark! They looked yummy!). And Verissa is just smiling. Prolonging he inevitable. Any minute now.

"That's because I only dance naked by moonlight," she says lightly. "Moonlight isn't good for freckling."

He is sure his mouth drops open, because _Morrigan _is the one who gives the next peal of laughter.

And she only ever does that when he looks like a royal idiot.


	5. Chapter 5

Alistair doesn't _like _Zevran.

It's not just the whole assassin thing. Though that is worrisome, too (understatement if there ever was one). Verissa doesn't think it prudent to set a guard on the man – much less tie him up, much less, I don't know, _kill _him. She even lets him do the cooking one night. Worrisome. Very worrisome.

It's that the elf is entirely too _lecherous _for his own good. It's not a word Alistair ever thought he'd hear outside a Chantry sermon, but it is the _exact _word to describe how Zevran looks at Morrigan, and how Zevran looks at Leliana, and how Zevran looks at...him? Maker, let it not be him. And especially how Zevran looks at Verissa. And Verissa is so very oblivious. It reminds him of a cat and a songbird.

Except his mageling isn't really that oblivious, is she? How could she be? They've got the Antivan tied up and bleeding on the ground and he has the gall to call her a _deadly sex goddess_, and if Alistair hadn't been so focused on trying to leap over Verissa's arm and strangle the other man he would have been able to say, with certainty, that she..._liked _it.

That can't be right.

That's _disgusting_.

But the truth is that they are both elves, aren't they, so that makes senseat least. And they're spending an awful lot of time by the fire while Zevran spins a carefully accented sob story of conquest and betrayal (_fake! _Alistair wants to scream, and goes stomping off to the woods to hack off branches with his sword instead, in a completely ridiculous display of manliness that leaves him with bruised shins and a black eye and splinters all to hell).

And now...

A brothel is no place for an ex-Templar.

He'd resolved to keep looking at the floor. But that was too obvious. So he looks at Verissa instead. But she's still wearing _those _robes. And her hair is done up very artfully to expose a single, delicate freckle on the back of her neck. She's talking to a dark-haired woman who's eyes say she wants to have his mageling for breakfast, perhaps with cream, perhaps with a side of Antivan – and the Antivan himself is entirely too close. No, he's got an arm around her shoulders. And as he leans in to whisper something in her ear his lips brush over the pointed tip and she goes all...stiff...

Huh?

Oh, right. Elf. Ears.

Why hasn't _he _ever tried that?

Then there are the women who are giggling in that horrible conspiracy way that women giggle and wearing _entirely _too few clothes for them to be draping themselves over him like this. Andraste, he could just sink through the floor and _die. _For any number of reasons. Many of them involving that lone, petal-like, _defenseless_ little freckle on the back of –

"Difficulties, Templar?" asks Morrigan. She's managing to look bored and interested at the same time, which is normal. Though for once, her choice of clothing actually makes her look like she _belongs _here. It all makes him absurdly jealous. He's just about to come up with a biting remark to this effect when she continues, "One would think you'd enjoy it here. So many young, nubile bodies to chose from. I saw a redheaded elven girl, I think – if you were to squint your eyes just right –"

He goes _red, _and splutters, and isn't able to get anything more articulate out than a strangled "Bwuh?" before –

"Alistair!" It's _her, _waving to him cheerily in a way that doesn't say _oh, hello, we're in a den of sin_. She's dragging Zevran to his feet, and the Antivan is laughing, and she's looking completely natural in here which doesn't make _sense_ because she is _his _mageling and he had to teach her what a brothel _was_ (_that _had been a fun conversation). "Alistair! Maker – " and he barely even notices the usual bitter twist she puts on the word as she all but _falls _against him, non-Circle robes and all, tugging him toward the door. "Maker, you look like you're going to combust if you stay in here much longer. Go out, get some air." She smiles at him, disarming. "I'll be there in a while, alright?"

"But-!" _Zevran_, his mind is screaming, and _assassin, _and _they are going to eat you alive _and he isn't even sure if he means it metaphorically or literally anymore.

"Isabella has some information for us," she says smoothly.

Isabella?

Then he's shoved out the door without any fanfare. Morrigan is with him, looking equal parts disgusted and deeply, deeply amused. He stands there, letting the night air cool his face (_not helping – _he doesn't think he'll ever go back to his normal skin tone again) and trying not to listen to the witch chuckle beside him. He has missed something. Several somethings.

Mostly he has missed _her_, moved far too slowly and missed his beautiful fearless red-haired songbird as she slipped right through his fingers.


	6. Chapter 6

He is going to keep trying.

He doesn't go with her _everywhere, _but Maker, he is going to keep trying. If only because the camp is so quiet when she is away. There is no one to talk to but Sten (who doesn't) or Fenharel (who does, somehow, and before this all started Alistair hadn't thought it was possible to be laughed at by a mabari).

He doesn't go with her when she finally gets to see her Dalish. Morrigan is there, and Leliana (of course) and Zevran (_of course)_, and they come back laughing and giddy and inexplicably flea-bitten. He does not understand how they've somehow secured the help of werewolves (werewolves! Actual, honest to goodness werewolves!) instead of the elves they came for. But, then, help is help, and the elves were oddly _snippy_. Hurrah for not-snippy people!

(Though the forest is so quiet when they leave – where did the snippy people _go? _He shrugs it off. Elves. Go figure.)

It's something that he _missed_, harrowing and snippy and wet-dog-smelling that it may have been, because now there are stories and jokes around the fire that _he doesn't know._ And there are more and more of them, too, as Verissa starts running errands for people across the country ("Why are you doing this?" he asks her one evening, cornering her as she goes to get firewood. "We're Grey Wardens. There's a Blight. You're not a delivery boy." He remembers the day they met – _**I'm **__the delivery boy_. She shrugs and mumbles something about allies being allies and people needing help, and it doesn't occur to him until later that he doesn't know _who _she's helping.)

He travels with her less and less, and he resents it, he _wants _to be taken along – even if it means putting up with Zevran's endless innuendo and Morrigan's cold remarks – because he will be with _her. _And she is fearless, so he'll be fearless too. They're the last Grey Wardens, after all, and if she's out there saving the world he _wants _to be with her –

Until the time that he is, and he doesn't.


	7. Chapter 7

AN: Someone noted that some of the phrasing and elements in this fic are similar to Crisum's wonderful 'What We Were.' Upon re-reading both this story and Crisum's, I'd agree...and I'm horrified at myself. In all honesty my first instinct was to delete all of 'Exsanguination' immediately. I did read 'What We Were' several months ago, and I suppose the story stuck with my subconscious...apparently it must have, or something, I don't know, but I'm VERY disturbed and I'd like to stress that absolutely no plagarism was intended. I wasn't even aware of it. I've decided to continue posting this story as is because it was written, or intended to be written, as a wholly original fic and in anycase it begins to largely deviate from Crisum's storyline starting about now.

And now you should all go read 'What We Were,' because I honestly think it blows this fic out of the water.

* * *

It's a Templar taking them across Lake Calenhad to the Circle Tower, not the boatman, and that makes Verissa nervous. And Morrigan is nervous because it's the _Circle, _and Alistair is nervous because they're taking an apostate into the Circle, Maker help them, and Zevran is just generally twitchy. So it's one big party of nervousness, really. Except for the Templar, because now that he's been away from them for so long Alistair is _horrified _by how stoic and statue-like the man is.

There is no sound but the dipping of the oars in the lake. The water is smooth as glass, silver and lyrium-blue. He leans over trying to see his reflection and nearly upsets the little boat.

"I remember when they first took me to the Circle," says Verissa thoughtfully, staring up at the slender dark from of the Tower. "It wasn't anything like this. It was storming. I couldn't even see the Tower, the waves nearly drowned us...I remember crying that the thunder was a monster coming to eat me." She smiles wanly. "I thought they were taking me to my death."

"You mean to say that they _didn't?"_ drawls Morrigan.

Verissa doesn't answer.

He means to ask her more about it, quiz her about her life in the Tower because she never talks about it and he's never heard much besides the Templar perspective, but then they're inside and oh, Maker, Greagoir. He _remembers _Greagoir. The last time he saw Greagoir he'd been scabby-kneed and cleaning chamber pots. It's not something he wants mentioned, so he does his best to hide behind his tiny elven mageling (and _why _is he wearing Templar armor? Irony? Sadism perhaps?) while the Knight Commander explains the situation.

_Blah blah blah demons, blah blah barricade, blah blah blah Irving, blah blah Rite of Annulment blah blah death doom disaster demons demons demons doomity doom doom. Doom. And did I mention Doom?_

It's hardly surprising anymore.

Then they are ushered inside, and he finds that all his Templar training had _never _prepared him for _this._

They meet a mage, an apprentice, curly hair flying, and she is running toward them smiling teary-eyed and _begging _for help one instant and the next she _convulses, _choked screams in the air as black tendrils force out of her mouth, out of her eyes, wrapping around her until she is _something else_ and before he can think there is dark blood all down his sword and he feels the Veil _shriek _as the demon is dragged back inside and the not-apprentice's body hits the floor with a heavy wet _thud_ and _Maker, she doesn't look older than ten._

"Pavia," Verissa says numbly, staring. "Her name was Pavia."

He isn't sure if he wants to be sick. Or congratulate her on taking this so _well _when he obviously isn't, weak not-Templar that he never was. Or if he wants to run back through the barrier because his mageling's eyes are pale and empty as she moves into the next room. She isn't afraid. She isn't _anything_, and that is something very, very wrong.

The air is thick with _wrong_.

Maybe that explains it all.

In the next room are mages who blessedly do _not _turn themselves into demons. Mages that look familiar, that Verissa surely knows. He half-expects her to go flying into their arms – he does _not _expect her smile to be fixed and brittle like winter glass.

"Wynne," she says, "I thought for sure you were dead." It is delivered so flat and matter-of-fact that even _he _is shocked and the implication, and he doesn't blame the Enchanter when she draws herself up like she's lecturing an unruly student again. Because, actually, she is. Oh, now there's a thought. The idea of Verissa as a student with an ink-smudged nose and pigtails and scabby knees...it's amusing. Only very much not.

It's not his place to listen to their conversation and so, he doesn't. Some of the younger apprentices are crying and so he does his best to soothe them, being big, goofy Alistair as he's so good at being. He _so _wishes he'd thought to not wear Templar armor. But still – soft words and funny faces will work on everyone (even, he's learned, a giant slobbering wardog), and he's just gotten the youngest boy to try a smile when he hears Morrigan, and then Verissa in soft agreement, and then Wynne in _entirely new _tones that have the Veil crackling behind them and make the hair stand up on his neck –

"You advisor is an apostate?" the elder mage says, the air around her gone bright with frost.

He is on his feet, hands up, palms raised. He _swears _that Templar armor is designed to always look as threatening as possible. "Whoa, whoa! Let's not jump to conclusions -!"

But it's as if he isn't _there. _It is a horrible feeling, one he will _never _get used to. He watches in horror as Wynne sets her face in grim, determined lines. "You will enter this Tower over my dead body."

_No!_

"Done," says Verissa.

And then – _no, mercy, no – _the entire tower is _shaking, _and the apprentices are screaming, and someone (he has no idea who, it might be Morrigan, could it be Morrigan?) has wrapped him in spider-webs that root him to the spot. The air crackles, fire-ice-lightning, lightning-fire-ice, back and forth, great swaths of power cutting the Veil to _ribbons _as he stands there trying to fight and trying to reign them all in.

_No, what are you _doing_, this is _wrong, _you are a Circle Mage, this is your _family...

When the dust clears there are scorch marks halfway up the walls, cracks in the stone, a thin film of blood on the floor. The aftertaste of magic _burns _in his eyes and his throat. And the three of _them _are standing there, panting and triumphant, and Morrigan's lips twist into a sneer as she lowers her hand and lets him out.

"So sorry, Templar," she chuckles. "But I could not trust you to do something incredibly _stupid _with that precious shiny sword of yours."

Zevran looks unconcerned, riffling through an apprentice's robes and pocketing anything shiny.

Verissa cocks her head at him, staff half-raised, _daring _him to say something.

He doesn't.

He _can't_.

Of course they need to get into the tower, of course they need to save the mages, of course they need to _not kill _the _mages_, they need to get past, of course, yes –

What in Andraste's name is he supposed to say to _this?_

His unafraid, _beautiful _mageling steps over Wynne's body. Her motions are deliberate. She does not look down. He thinks he hears her chuckle. It's been months and months since Ostagar, but his world breaks a little more.


	8. Chapter 8

After that, he can't tell where the nightmare ends and the other nightmare begins. It's all one great, bloody blur. Some of the abominations burst to flames when they die, and he finally gets to see what Verissa's hair looks like when it's on fire, and it's even more terrifying than he thought it would be.

They move on quickly, relentless. Verissa doesn't want to _stop, _doesn't want to _look_, doesn't even want to _be _here, sparks crackling over her gloved fingertips and teeth clenched in concentration and resentment. They pause only twice. Once, in a wreck of a dormitory with broken mirrors and bodies, _everywhere, _in blue-and-purple robes, sprawled and twisted, cooked in a flash while fleeing toward the door. Verissa pauses in front of a bed. He thinks he hears her whisper to Zevran _this was mine _and jealousy hooks its claws in his chest – why the assassin? Why does _he _get to share that with her? Why not _him?_

The second time is in the library, where she makes them wait on broken glass while she pulls book after book from the shelves. It's a truly obscene number, simply ridiculous, and his mouth hits the floor again when she reappears with no more bulges in her robes than normal. "Where are you keeping all those?"

She grins at him. "Secret."

"Oh, I get it. Big mage secret, hide the dirty books from the Templars, very hush-hush. I'm on to you."

She snickers, and Zevran gives a bark of laughter. He is a bit shocked that he can manage a joke – and a slightly suggestive one at that, what's gotten into him? – after Wynne. He opens his mouth to lecture her about it, just _tear _into her, viciously, like she deserves – but then a demon roars down the hall, and the moment is gone.

After that it's just horrible. Straight-up horror. Not only because of the demons but also because of the _climbing. _He loses track after five-hundred some steps and Zevran begins to voice, loudly, all the things he wishes to do with the architect who designed this place. He's reached some _very _obscure poisons by the time they –

Oh.

There is no more Tower.

There are no more demons, there is no more fire and blood and broken Veil and horror, and he is so _happy._

It happens so suddenly that he laughs. This had all been a dream, yes, some silly little night-terror coming back to haunt him from when he was a boy and would go running all the way up to Arl Eamon for comfort. Hell of a dream. He shakes his head.

His sister is there – Goldanna, yes, of course, she has _always _been there, why would he ever think otherwise? And her cooking is just marvelous. Not all _weird _like the Arlessa's, not all mushy and flavorless and probably toxic like the stews that they always have...when?

Who is 'they'?

Oh, right, that was the dream.

Goldanna keeps lots of cheese in the pantry. He likes cheese.

And his little boy is there, running to show him the dragon (mouse) he's slain with his great dragonbone (wooden) sword. He is burbling with laughter. Alistair picks him up and swings him around, roaring like a dragon himself, and little Duncan shrieks with delight –

_She _is in the doorway, laughing, sunlight catching copper in her hair.

Duncan runs along and he goes to kiss her, deciding all at once _not _to stoop for her height and picking her up instead like he had their son. She makes a small indignant sound, but then her arms are around him and she fits so nicely against his chest and they're _kissing _(of course they're kissing, why does this surprise him?) and her lips are so _soft _and taste like all manner of wonderful things. Honey and spice and _magic. _And it's fantastic, really, it is.

He could stay like this forever.

He hears someone clear their throat at the corner of his awareness, doesn't register it until – "Hey!" – pale and blood-drenched hands grab _her _and fling _her _to the ground. He turns, yelling, reaching for a sword that isn't there (the Blight is gone, why would he wear a sword at home?) and -

What?

There are _two _of her. There is Verissa in a summer dress with sunlight in her hair, and then there is Verissa in strange grey Tevinter robes, blood splattering the hem and blood all up to her elbows, clutching her staff like she means to whack him on the head with it. She isn't _soft, _she isn't _nice_, she looks pale and ruthless and _furious_, pure mage, really quite terrifying, _what in the Maker...?_

_Oh._

Before the illusion shifts and soft-Verissa's eyes glow demon-purple, he has time to think _how horribly embarrassing. _

She doesn't speak of it, once they're all free and back together. She doesn't even give him a _look_, the one he's expecting, the one he keeps cringing away from in his mind. This is just typical. Romance is dead, he's killed it, might as well go sign himself back to the Chantry now. Smooth, Alistair. Very, very smooth.

And Maker, it's petty of him, but he wishes the assassin showed her something similar (though knowing him it would probably be worse. The kinds of things he'd only seen in books that made him scratch his head and wonder how that was possible).

The rest of it passes in a blur: up a thousand more flights of stairs and a captured Templar that may have killed romance even _worse _than he just did (it makes him feel better, though not by much) and up more stairs to the Harrowing Chamber, which unlike everything else in the Tower is _exactly _what it seems to be. Harrowing. Also terrifying. And many other things that rhyme. He blocks out the sibilant speech of the Pride demon as he's been trained to do. Though he idly wonders what it's saying – Verissa looks contemptuous and cold, Morrigan curious, Zevran faintly surprised. He looks to First Enchanter Irving, but the man is passed out in a heap on the floor. Can't blame him.

There is more screaming and a battle and a blur of lightning-fire-ice ice-fire-lightning, red-light-blue-light like a children's game, _far _too many slashing demon claws and _too much blood_. The prick and tear of blood magic in the room is _wrong_, still scraping on his nerves even as more and more maleficarum are killed. It hangs cloying in the air. Tang and poison. Verissa stands in the middle of it, pale and bloody and _untouchable_, calling up a tempest that rips the panes from the windows and sends the wind howling through the Tower.

She is his mageling, slayer of demons, and she saves them all, and she is _beautiful._

And there is a moment – Maker help him, but this is such a _sin _that the Revered Mother would just _kill _him outright – there is a moment when Alistair wants the other one _back._


	9. Chapter 9

He's always hung on to the hope that Arl Eamon would make it all better. Fix everything. Just like that. Snap of the fingers. But then they get to Redcliffe, and oh, wouldn't you know, _doom_. Arl Eamon is sick, and all his knightly friends are gone but Arlessa Isolde isn't – you think with so much _doom _in the world she'd at least have the decency to fall in a well somewhere – and Recliffe itself...

Well...

The undead horde isn't here for tea and crumpets, that's for sure.

At least, he consoles himself (while wiping slime off his sword for the fiftieth time that night) 'undead' doesn't start with a _D. _

But of course there is a _dungeon. _Isn't that just typical. And you think Teagan would have the intelligence to _not _walk into a trap that might as well have a big, flashing red sign on it saying TRAP, but so much for that. He chalks it up to the Arlessa. _Everything _always comes back to the Arlessa.

There is a dungeon_, _and that's an entire week's worth of doom because they find the bloodmage down there. Though he looks like too much of a wimp to be a bloodmage. He's still in apprentice robes, for Andraste's sake. Alistair begins playing soccer with an undead head against the wall, waiting for Verissa to finish her questioning and get it over with, you'd think after what just happened at the Circle she'd know that maleficarum need to be killed quickly –

"...Jowan..."

He turns. "What?" He points his sword-tip at the man, who flinches away even through the bars (and _why is he still in Templar armor?)_. "Your best friend Jowan? That Jowan? You mean to tell me that this is _him?_"

Nod.

He is surely gaping at her, at both of them. He can tell because Morrigan is giving him that look. He doesn't care. "Can you tell me _why_ your best friend is a _bloodmage?_"

She gives a long, long sigh. "Alistair..."

"She didn't know I was a bloodmage!" says the man – boy? – earnestly in rising, whining tones. "Honest! And I only dabbled – only a little! I swear! I've given it up!"

But there are years and years of Chantry discipline screaming in his head. "We should kill this man _now_," he says, as if 'this man' isn't here. Because they _should_. Obviously.

"Jowan," says Verissa, gone all cold. "His name is _Jowan_."

"And we should –"

"Set him free."

It takes a minute for the words to penetrate his Templar armor, and when they do the only thing that springs to mind is "what?"

"_I'm _setting him free," Verissa repeats, and even though she has to crane her neck to look at him she doesn't flinch at all. "You can fight me, if you like."

And yes, he is _certainly_ gaping at her, because that's what it always takes to get Morrigan to step in. "She's talking sense, Templar," she says lightly, head cocked to the side as if considering him for her next spidery meal. "He's of little use to us here and he swears that he will help. What's the sense in letting a possible ally rot in some dank, disgusting cell?"

"Oh, and of course you would say that," he snaps, "with your – your _strong moral center _and all –"

Verissa's eyes are trained on him and they are _dangerous_. "Alistair, he is my _friend._"

"No. No, he should be dead, or at least he should be left here to let the rats nibble on him. End. Of. Story."

"And no one asks what I think," sighs an accented and _disgustingly _long-suffering voice from the shadows. "It's all just orders. Zevran, do this. Zevran, kill this man. Zevran, stand there and look ridiculously handsome." A sigh. "How fortunate that I am so good at it."

Verissa smiles, gaze not wavering an inch. "Zevran, open this cage?"

"Ah, yes. That too." The elf slips past and Alistair _could _grab him, _could _throw him to the ground and wipe that little Antivan smirk off his face and break all those shiny little lockpicks. But he and his mageling are glaring at each other, and he's not even sure who has who rooted to the spot. "If anyone's asking, I agree with the lovely women here," the Antivan tells him (or does he? He can never tell; half the times it seems Zevran talks to the air, the walls, or anything that will listen). "He's promised not to kill you, and we all know such promises hold weight, yes?"

"Shut up," Alistair mutters.

He doesn't want to look away, doesn't want to give up the slightest inch of ground, doesn't want to stop pouring _this is wrong _and _how stupid can you be_ and _bloodmage, HELLO!_ into her cool grey eyes. So she's the one who does. Finally. She turns to Jowan in his tattered blood-spattered robes and she _hugs_ him, by Andraste, she _hugs_ the bloodmage, and he is left there making small stupid inarticulate noises of rage and wondering, when did the world get so _wrong?_


	10. Chapter 10

He thought things couldn't get worse after that.

It was a nice thought. Nice and refreshing. In a morbid sort of way.

Didn't last very long, though.

There are undead and a demon (oh look! More demons!) and Connor, who wasn't even born when he left and who _isn't _Connor anymore but an abomination. And there is Teagan doing back flips up and down the hall, and that...that...

That might not be on the same level as _demons, _but Maker help him if it isn't just as disturbing.

The Arlessa is on her knees pleading most eloquently for her son's life, expertly-shadowed eyes wet with tears. He knows it's an act. Of course it's an act. Everything she does is an act. Most likely. Mostly. But she is so very good at it that he almost feels a twinge of pity, hand on the hilt of his sword as he tells her: Yes it will be quick. Yes, he's done this before. No, there isn't any chance of saving an abomination. No. None. Your son is gone. I'm sorry.

He wants this to be _done_.

He does _not _want Verissa and _Jowan_ to appear at his elbow with a solution involving _blood magic_.

He rants, and he rails, and he considers storming out (but where would he go?), but it's like he isn't there _again. _They all talk over him. One great conspiracy of women. Because it's _Jowan _who's reluctant and _Verissa _who seizes on the idea and _Isolde _who makes it her own. Isolde who is _asking _to die in the most unholy way possible. And of course Morrigan agrees. Zevran agrees. Even Teagan agrees, with much prodding and pleading and teary Orlesian eyes.

He agrees on an academic principle only – kill the mother to save the child, kill the old to spare the young, alright, he doesn't like it but it's _alright_. But -!

Blood magic!

_Blood magic!_

It is wrong and demonic and _evil, _and he _cannot _stand by and let it happen. He cannot let Verissa touch it. Little brave Verissa will have demons crawling out her mouth and her pretty grey eyes because everyone knows that this magic corrupts and _changes_. It is _not _to be touched. It is not even to be _talked _about. This is so many different types of wrong (is he the only one here who cares about sinanymore? About morality? Anyone? Anyone?). He cannot just stand here and allow –

And then, somehow, he does.

He has no idea why or how, but he does.

"You Templars are like statues, aren't you?" says Morrigan, leaning coolly up against the wall and far too close for comfort. Her eyes are flat, yellow-gold, predatory. "Be a good little statue and stay still and _watch_."

Jowan the maleficar has drawn a circle in the ground and Isolde within it is lifted in the air like a rag doll, liquid Orlesian eyes gone wide. There is blood at her mouth and ears and eyes, blood bursting forth from her skin in a flood – he _watches _as it flies to his mageling in a dark wave and swirls around her and she arches like one demon-touched and then crumples, sleeping, dreaming in spreading pool of _sin_.

He could have moved.

He _could _have.

Shame is twisting inside him and he is going to be sick – so he tells himself that this is just like a Harrowing, waiting for the little mage to return from the Fade. Just like the Joining. He ignores the Arlessa's body at his feet. He makes himself tall and still and silent like the Templar he never was. And he waits. Watching.

"Is this not what you wanted?" whispers the witch. "You did say you always hated her." She smiles at Isolde. The Arlessa is pale and tiny and _empty_. She's drained to white, her open flat-dead eyes rimmed in red.

It's the first time he's ever thought of her as a mother.

"This worked out the best for everyone," purrs Morrigan. "Don't you agree?"

And because Alistair is a good little Templar, he doesn't say a word.


	11. Chapter 11

Arl Eamon is still sick, so Teagan has come down from his study long enough to tell them how to go fetch a miracle. It's all very casual. They might as well make a him sign that reads "will perform impossible tasks for food."

They're in the foyer, hunched over a pile of notes that the Bann has brought down. Teagan is trying to ignore the servants who are scrubbing Isolde's blood from the floor; Alistair is trying to ignore the muffled yelling coming from the dungeon. The servants all have their hands on their pointy ears, wincing, and he hears one of them mutter that they'll need to repair the damage that was done during the attack to block out more of the sound because this is just _embarrassing_.

Jowan is down there. _Not _being tortured; even he can grudgingly admit that the man saved Connor's life, which is an impossible task of its own.

(Everyone knows that there's nothing left for the bloodmage but death or Tranquility – and at the mention of the latter Jowan and Verissa both look at him like he's suggested feeding them to the Darkspawn.)

Verissa's been down with him for hours.

He can't imagine what all the yelling's coming from.

It's Jowan doing most of it, and he can't make out words through the stone but it sounds like the man has launched into a full-fledged rant by now. If Verissa were the one yelling it would make _sense_. Blood magic and all. _Obviously_. But (and it's getting harder and harder to concentrate on Teagan's notes, because now he can hear footfalls coming up the dungeon steps) Jowan isn't stopping, seems to be getting louder. This is so far removed from their huggy reunion, what on _earth _could the bloodmage possibly have to say that –

"_...didn't you __**tell **__me? What happened to __**best friends**__? I don't care about 'just in case' they c-"_

Verissa slams shut the door and leans against it as if trying to block more of Jowan's shouts with her body.

Alistair raises an eyebrow. "What was that?"

She looks up; her eyes flicker a for an instant before they drop to the side. "Lilly." Teagan is narrowing his eyes and Alistair opens his mouth to press the issue but then she moves forward, laying slender gloved hands on the papers they have spread out on the table. "Right, what crazy stunt are we pulling this time?"


	12. Chapter 12

'Crazy stunt' apparently means 'fight a dragon.'

It's like he's back at the Chantry – he's never heard the name 'Andraste' bandied around so much in his life. Cultists boil out of the ruined temple like rats (or Darkspawn – it's unnerving). It doesn't take long before they're simply _exhausted. _Morrigan's nose is bleeding a little, Verissa's skin is a flat grey color, and he can tell that neither of them has enough energy left to do much more besides boil tea. He and Zevran are each trying to out-do the other in protecting the women, because, well, that's what the men are supposed to do, right?

Right. Yep.

Ooh, look, her robes are torn almost all the way up the thigh.

Insert joke about swords here.

(He's in a temple, why is he thinking this?)

And then they're outside and _Maker, blessed sunlight, _they're actually on top of the mountain. Snow and sunlight and he can see all the way to Denerim, or close enough, and it's _fantastic._ And – _oh crap._

It _is _Andraste, and she knows that he's been thinking unholy thoughts, and she is going to _kill _him.

They all duck out of the way in different directions as she lands in a crash and a deafening roar and _Maker have mercy, that is actually a dragon_. He's flattened against a rock but still the gust from her wings is like a small hurricane. How are they supposed to kill something that _big?_

Looks like they're going to try, though.

The next few moments are a blur – he's running, he's ducking, the hair on his head is frizzing and singeing away in a blast of flame. He sees Morrigan duck under a claw and the next time he looks the witch is gone and there is a wolf snapping at the dragon's underbelly. Zevran catches his knife on a wingtip and shreds it –

_Hey, that's a good idea _–

Not-Andraste's jaws snap shut. A burst of lightning makes her drop the assassin and _scream_.

He is trying to get behind the dragon because, hey, hamstringing something always works even when the something is this big. There's blood on his sword and he doesn't know how it got there. He doesn't remember fighting or parrying anything and oh _crap _a lash of the tail almost takes his head off. He drops to the ground, rolls just out of the way out of another blast of fire. There is a resounding _crack _and canine whimper.

Verissa is in the middle of it, horribly _horribly _still, skin ashen with exhaustion and eyes blank. She looks resigned. The sight makes his heart jump in his throat. The dragon swivels around her head and she is just _standing _there –

"Get _down!_"

He's grabbed her and yanked her away. It is stupidly heroic of him but she's _away _and he's clutching her hand like he means to wring it off. Her skin is iceand webbed with layer upon layer of scars, _that isn't right_ – then _she _yells at _him_ and a snap of jaws sends them both flying apart.

Not very gracefully, either.

He stumbles and falls, cracks his chin, and his sword goes skipping out of his hand. He watches it skitter away. Flash of being sixteen in the training grounds again, disarmed _again, _all the proper Templars laughing at him, _Alistair, thinks he's so much better than the rest of us and look at that – hopeless – never amount to anything – _

_Going to die on some lonely mountain – _

_Pick it up, you idiot! Pick it __**up!**_

He crawls for his sword when _something _nudges him, something scaly and hotflips him onto his back.

The dragon is staring right at him.

Her snout is inches from his face. Rage is sparking in her black lizard eyes and _sweet Andraste_...

There are so many teeth.

He should be doing something, should be squirming, should be _moving, _but there are so many _teeth_.

_Hey Andraste?_

_Did you know you have really bad breath?_

Her jaws open –rows and rows and rows of teeth, coiled back like a snake about to strike, when he signed on with the Grey Wardens he never thought he would die like this...

And the Veil _screams _as it's ripped wide open.


	13. Chapter 13

When Alistair can summon the nerve to open his eyes the dragon is _still _inches from his face. He shuts them again, opens them again when he realizes she's not moving. Faint, black energy is swirling around her. He reaches out a finger. Taps it against a tooth as long as his forearm. _Ping._

Nope. Not moving.

And his Templar training is screaming at him that something is _so very very __**wrong**_**.**

He squirms away in a completely undignified manner and scrambles to his feet. This is surelythe witch – but Morrigan is curled next to the rock she was flung against, only half-conscious and clutching her head. Zevran is cursing in Antivan as he plucks broken teeth out of his shoulder. And Verissa –

She's standing in the open, breathing in great, panting gasps that shake her entire frame. Her arms are held slightly away from her body and _oh dear Maker that's a lot of blood _there are long, deep gashes in each of her wrists _that's a __**lot **__of __**blood. **_For a bare instant he tells himself that they are claw marks, clean and parallel claw marks...no...

_No no no no no __**no**__..._

Great, dark tendrils of blood are being sucked away to swirl around the dragon. The magic scrapes on his nerves, raw and sharp and wrong – it is the maleficarum in the Circle again, it is Isolde again, and his mageling's face is snow-white and blank with shock, faintly jubilant.

The spell snaps like a sheet. There is a roaring, a ripping, a huge noise as the dragon crashes to the ground with blood leaking from her mouth and eyes and from under each individual scale – and there is no sound at all as Verissa crumples.

Alistair stands there, watching.

No.

This isn't right. She wouldn't...she would never...she _couldn't_...

And that's a _lot _of blood.

He needs to stop thinking like that and _get his sword_, but perhaps she's cast a spell on him as well because he can't move. He just watches as the others stumble over to her. Zevran's swearing gets louder as he inspects her wrists – they are cut halfway to the elbow, and they are still bleeding.

"Idiot girl," says Morrigan, voice gone thick and nasal. "I'd have let it devour him, we'd be no worse off." She sighs as she kneels in the blood. "You haven't quite killed yourself yet, but that was foolish."

Verissa reaches up a shaking, scarred hand. Her voice is a whisper. "Can I...?"

The witch sighs. "If you must."

The elf touches the blood just trickling down Morrigan's face – the witch's nose gives a loud _crack_ as red blossoms anew and flows down Verissa's fingers. Her wrists close.

There are healing spells exchanged back and forth, as Morrigan stops clutching her nose and Zevran comments on how if _he _could heal himself like that he'd be able to retire early, jobs would become so easy – "it doesn't work on dead people, Zev" - and Verissa levers herself to her feet, leaning heavily on her staff. There's a knife held limply in her other hand, she's all red from head to toe (hair, lips, robes), and she _finally_ looks at him. She has the nerve to lift her chin.

"Well, Alistair?" she asks. Her voice only shakes a little. "You going to kill me now?"

Maker's breath, he's been standing here like an idiot the whole time when he could have at least gotten his sword. His tongue doesn't seem to work anymore. "You -!"

"Yes, me."

"You're - !"

"A bloodmage, yes."

He is _shaking _with rage, and it's like a slap when she says – quite calmly – "go get your sword if it will make you feel better."

And he does, because she's right, because he doesn't know what else to do. He feels small. Feels like a foolish little boy. The Chant is tumbling over and over in his head.

"I'm surprised you hadn't noticed before now," Morrigan is saying, loudly. "Truly, your mental powers are a wonder to behold."

"And I owe you five silvers, yes?" sighs Zevran.

The witch's voice is smug. "Ten."

"Will you _shut up!_" he snaps, turning on them, sword in hand. It's horribly heavy. He's going to make this _right_, but first he's going to _understand_, because right now nothing makes sense because the new Grey Warden is telling him that she is a bloodmage – his fearless and beautiful little mage is a _bloodmage – _he is very proud that he's not screaming at her. Not quite. At least not yet. "How _could _you?"

"Very easily," she smirks.

And then he's shouting and she's calmly explaining as if she hadn't just been moments away from calling a pack of demons down on their heads and becoming a _thing. _He's envisioning her changing. Sick black ropes of _sin _crawling over her and twisting her into something that needs to be killed _right now _because it's horrible and wrong – _she _is horrible and wrong – his grip on his sword is slick with sweat.

Her words prick like frost magic against the Chant drumming through his brain. _Before I left the Circle, no one knew because Jowan was too obvious. Good thing I became a Grey Warden. Duncan wouldn't have minded_...

It's the last one that's another slap. "Duncan would _never _have harbored a malefi-"

"Duncan wouldn't have _cared,"_ she repeated, voice metal-cold. "The Grey Wardens need all the help we can get."

"_Don't _say we." It's startling, almost, the rage in his voice, and he shifts his weight unconsciously. Is he blocking an incoming blow? Preparing to charge? Attack, execute, purify, cleanse, justice? It's not terribly clear. "Don't you _dare _say we. I am not a part of this."

"I'm a Warden, Alistair. Nothing else matters."

But it _does. _She isn't making sense. He tells her this over and over again, yelling. He is breaking every cardinal rule of what they taught him. Every single one. He is _not _to talk to a maleficar because maleficarum are as fickle and treacherous as Desire Demons themselves and because maleficarum will kill him on sight in all manner of nasty ways that made his blood turn to ice in the middle of the night (_blood, _it's _everywhere_, spattered over everything like some ghoulish confetti, get it _off_). He is _not _supposed to talk to a maleficar because they are not _fit _to talk. None of that suddenly matters because his – Maker, his? – beautiful brave little Verissa is a bloodmage and she _doesn't understand_.

She is playing a children's game with demons – hopscotch, pattycake, _there's _an image – and she doesn't understand. He needs to do the impossible _again _and _make_ her understand, make her see...see...because if she _doesn't_ and he has to...

"Blood magic isn't 'evil,'" she tells him. The dismissive quotes around the word are a punch to the gut.

"But it _is_."

"And what about the Joining? Hmm?" She's standing battle-ready with a conspiracy glint in her eye and he _does not like _where this is going. Before he can interrupt that this isn't relevant she goes on: "We use blood and lyrium to give us special abilities, you know –"

"Shut up," he snaps, because Zevran and Morrigan are right there and that is a whole other school of blasphemy. She talks right over him.

Hasn't she always talked right over him?

"- _frightening _abilities that sap our life away. I don't think the Chantry would approve, do you?"

"That's not -!"

"Or what about the phylacteries you Templars use to hunt mages?" She's smiling like she's won her little children's game. He thinks of those little vials of red humming with magic in a cold forbidden vault –

"It's not the same," he says flatly, in a tone that leaves no room for argument. "Not the same at all."

"Why?"

"It's not blood magic!"

"Why?"

He stares at her, makes an inarticulate sputtering noise – _what more do you __**want?**_ – comes up with "because we don't use to hurt people!"

"_Twenty _silvers," murmurs Morrigan, eyeing him. "Shifting the terms so early in the conversation!"

Verissa doesn't even blink. "Neither do I."

"No?" He jabs his sword at the dragon "Because I'd call that hurting someone."

"I'd call that saving your life," offers Zevran.

Verissa shrugs. "I'd call that being useful. And not hurting some_one _unless you believe the doggerel about that being Andraste Reborn. I _don't_ go around sacrificing small children, Alistair. Even though it would make fights like this much easier. I'd think you'd have noticed by now."

Morrigan gives a quiet chuckle, murmurs "don't be so sure."

"But you _could._" _You need to understand this. _"You easily _could." Why won't you understand this?_

"And you could run me through right now, couldn't you?"

He swallows like she's magicked a block of ice into his throat. For an instant he'd forgotten the steel in his hand and the incessant drum of the Chant in his head. Verissa _smiles _again, has the nerve to take a step forward. He realizes that he's being dared. Morrigan smirks – _toyed with_. "Couldn't you?" she repeats.

"What are you trying to prove?" he asks. His voice has taken on this sudden horrible hesitant note and he wants to _kick _himself, right here. He wants to just _die_.

"Why haven't you killed me, Templar?"

She has never called him _Templar _before.

It's the witch's word, Morrigan's little name for him that's pure scorn and thorns and spite. It means _stupid _and _cruel _and _naive_ – all wrapped up in a bundle of shame for what he almost-never was and served with a side of _hate_ – and he's frozen more firmly than any spell ever could. This isn't right. He must have slipped back into the demon's dream because this isn't real. (He'd _kissed _her in the demon's dream, he thinks, and the memory is a wave of sick-scented heat in his chest. It had been like kissing velvet, if velvet were sort of violent and kept breaking off to bite at your neck, and it had been _fantastic, _and she was – )

The new Grey Warden is an elf, and a mage, and a girl, and a _bloodmage_, and she is pale and ruthless and doesn't fear _anything, _not demons, not the Maker, not him. And she is beautiful and purely terrifying and so horribly naive that she doesn't even –

Except he looks at the little smile on her lips, curving red. She knows _exactly _what she has just done.

Alistair just stares at her as he slowly realizes that he doesn't know her at all.

"Because..." he begins, and then stops. His right arm is shaking. The sword tip dips a little lower toward the ground. "Because you're _you_."

"Because I'm a Grey Warden, you mean," she says. There is laughter in her voice. "Even though you just said that didn't matter, because...?"

He doesn't know her at _all_.

"Leave the boy alone," sighs Morrigan, taking Verissa's bloody hand and tugging her away toward the cavern entrance. "'Tis a wonder his poor brain has not given up and died before now."

The witch and the murderer and the maleficar turn to go. Alistair is left standing there – there's a sword drooping ever-lower in his grip and there's a blood-splattered dragon at his feet and he's gaping like an _idiot_. His mageling – _his mageling? – _is walking away from him, arm in bloody arm with an apostate and an assassin. Left him here. Like a misbehaving pet. He's missed his chance to...to...

The Chant is loud as a gong between his ears. Somehow he hasn't gotten through even _half _the yelling he was supposed to have done. (But he wasn't supposed to be yelling at all because there was a sword in his hand. Maker, why was there a sword in his hand? How could he have ever thought – how _couldn't _he have -?)

No.

Maker, _no._

She is _his _mageling, and she _isn't_, and there are about fifty different types of sin and wrong and _doom _roaring down upon them both, and she is _gone_.

Alistair gives a wordless cry and turns, sword driving into the crumpled body of the dragon. Again and again and again. The impact runs up his arm, shakes his frame. _Again._ He hacks through scale, muscle, bone – blood splatters everywhere until he is coated with it. Sick iron, sticky and wet. His face is _wet._ The head spins away like an ugly top by the time he throws the red-slick sword away. He stands there, fists clenching and unclenching.

(He imagines her and the witch far away, heads together, snickering at this ridiculous display of masculinity, and he hates himself).

He could turn around and go back down the mountain. He could leave.

He _could_.

Not-Andraste's head is lying at his feet, and the Chant and duty and a pretty mageling's eyes are tumbling around in his head. He makes the only choice he can.

He follows.


	14. Chapter 14

"Why?" he asks.

"Because I can."

It is much, much later. The Deep Roads are all sorts of horrible. There are things down here that make him sick – things down here that make him retch and that he's sure will wake him up in a cold sweat for years and years to come – and miles upon miles of rock pressing overhead. He imagines them slowly being crushed. Squished like pancakes. Trapped, abandoned, asphyxiated, gutted and eaten alive.

Then, of course, he imagines coming here to die.

It seems like an appropriate place to ask.

"That's not an answer," he complains. She gives him an annoyed look. It's the first time they've spoken in weeks (the first time that's more than commands, at least, though ever since _that _she phrases them more like polite requests – _Can you take first watch tonight, Alistair? Can you please stop this genlock from eating my face, Alistair? – _as if wary of setting him off. He doesn't think she fears being run through as much as she fears having to hear another furious rant).

"I – look." Verissa sighs, pauses to pick blood from under her thumbnail. She's stopped wearing the gloves, unless they're in cities – her hands are pure scar, pale and shimmering in the torchlight. He can see the spell that killed the dragon running up her arm. "It's a tool. It's a school of magic, plain and simple, and I thought it would be a good thing to know. It's simply another tool to help me get ahead."

"No matter the cost," he says, looking at the scars.

"No matter the cost. Grey Warden, remember? Defeat the Blight, absolutely, let _nothing _stand in your way? Same thing?"

He can't help but say it. "But you never thought about sin -?"

"No." They can both feel Darkspawn swarming in the distance and she stands, brushing off her robe with a weary look that may be directed at him or may just be directed at dust. It's hard to tell in the dark. "No. I didn't care about sin. I didn't make pacts with demons, nothing like that. It's just a tool, Alistair. Nothing sinister. Just something else to use on the way toward saving us all." She flashes him a smile just before the first Darkspawn are upon them. It's bitter, twisted, but for a moment he has her _back_. "You can't fault me for that, no?"

He can almost feel himself agreeing. It is so very, very wrong. But – using whatever you can, letting _nothing _stand in your way, never shrinking no matter the cost – yes, he can see it. It almost...

And then they meet Branka.

And suddenly it's just one more thing to keep him up at night.


	15. Chapter 15

It occurs to him (it is _much _later now, as he pauses to watch her run her fingers over height-marks scratched in the doorframe of the Alienage orphanage) that he knows so little about her.

The thought is heretical,almost, what with her being a Warden and then a mage and _dear sweet Maker don't forget she's a maleficar, Alistair, _and the sudden fact that oh, hey, he may just end up being king (that last has just _swooped _down from the blue in these past few weeks. He's always known that swooping is bad, but this is just taking it to a whole new level).

But apart from a few sparse comments she might as well have had no life at all before she showed up at Ostagar that horrible morning. She might have appeared from the blue, _poof, _like an unusually pretty Shade. They troop through the orphanage (it's as good a guess as any, right?) and he watches her face for wistfulness, for _anything, _but all he sees is anger. And anger is perfectly understandable where there are ghosts of little children and bloodstains that never went away (and some of them are _old, _sunk into the wood in rooms the riot did not touch, what kind of a place _is _this anyway?).

He runs over the phrasing in his head.

_Hey, Verissa?_

That's a good start, better than _hey, you, bloodmage!_

_So I was just wondering what kind of childhood you had that makes you think it's okay to break the Chantry's laws._

Hmm…no.

_Actually really I was wondering what kind of childhood you had that lets you just kind of, you know, casually slash a knife through your palm._

'_Cause it's a bit disturbing._

_Also I was wondering what you're going to do after the Blight. _

_After I'm king and all._

_Because if I'm king, and you're still around – I know, we're probably going to end up as the Archdemon's appetizers, but bear with me – and you're still around and still, you know, a _bloodmage, _I can't in good conscience let you just…go…_

_And you'll probably be some sort of hero too. Which – don't get me wrong – you'll absolutely deserve, but…that…that will be hard to explain to the Bannorn, won't it? "Oh, hey, this woman saved all your lives, let's arrest her now." Yeah. It'll go over well. But letting you go sets _precedent, _and there's also the small matter of the Grand Cleric knowing all these embarrassing stories from when I was thirteen that I'd like to _not _be blackmailed with, and…_

_So any ideas?_

It takes the roar of a demon to make him realize he hasn't said any of this out loud.

Verissa is crouched by a door, pointy ear pressed to the wood. The door is peppered with gouges from tiny, scrabbling fingernails. "Down the hall," she mutters, "it's not coming toward us." She straightens and fixes her eyes on Ser Otto. "What do you see?"

"Rage," the blind man answers. His eyes drift past Verissa. They brush by Alistair and he shudders under their gaze, dull white and rimmed with scars. "Anger at growing up too quickly. At being trod on, being told it was worthless. Desire to prove itself. To make things right and to –"

"The door," sighs Morrigan, taking Ser Otto by the shoulders and turning him ninety degrees, "is _that _way."


	16. Chapter 16

When he kills Loghain it is supposed to feel like justice.

Not consolation.

He is not supposed to feel like the dog.

But he does, horribly. He has been a good boy, he's said the words and played the part and meekly bent for her to place a crown on his head, he didn't leave on the mountaintop, he's never killed her in her sleep, and so in payment he gets to wield a shiny sword and turn _vengeance _and _setting things right _into something like a bone thrown down to the team pet.

He feels dirty.

Verissa gives him a small little smile over the blood pooling on the floor. _Isn't this what you wanted? _she mouths. She is _beautiful _in her Tevinter grey robes with long satin gloves over the scars on her hands. Her hair is swept up in silver pins. Sunlight streaming through the windows turns it copper, and if he squints just right her eyes look almost purple in the shadows.

_Isn't this exactly what you wanted?_

Eamon steps on his foot to remind him that he's supposed to give a speech. As their king.

Not as their obedient little pet.

He doesn't remember what he says, but the roar of the crowd drowns him out anyway.


	17. Chapter 17

"I will be the one to make that blow," Riordan says with a nod. Everything about the Orlesian Warden is tired. Alistair cannot blame him. He has just finished telling the two recruits that they will _die, _guaranteed, no money back, unless this man who has been turned into sticks and bones by months in Arl Howe's dungeon somehow manages to single-handedly lop the head off a _dragon_.

It's a precious sliver of hope and he latches onto it like a Chantry mouse onto cheese.

He is _afraid, _afraid of leading, afraid of _loss, _and so he doesn't say anything when Verissa shifts from foot to foot, mouth quirking to the side as she murmurs that she will be second in line.

"Ferelden needs a king," she adds, almost an aside, and his heart does this funny sideways lurch in his chest at the _look _in her eyes as they flick to him – it is almost desperate, almost _needy _in a way that should be setting off warning bells but, hey, wow. He's never gotten _needy_ before. "We must do everything to make sure they have him."

Part of him wants to protest and puff out his chest with some flippant remark, but he senses that the older Grey Warden would disapprove of the casual way their little group can joke about death. He doesn't say anything. Not as Riordan leaves. Not as Verissa leaves, following the witch's summons from down the hall. He sits on the bed, turning his mother's Chantry amulet over and over in his hands, thinking.

He can almost hear Morrigan's laugh at the idea, but there it is.

Thinking.

Because, if Verissa dies – and this is _horrible, _but it's probably the one horrible thing he's thought of in all these past months that is _not _a sin and that _wouldn't _make the Revered Mother's head explode – then all those little problems about blood magic are solved.

Gone.

Poof!

It's too perfect to be true, except that it's _not_, because she is _his._

And he's her perfect little puppet now, isn't he, and he would make an awful king. Everyone knew it. Anora had said it to his face, that _shrew _of a woman (she buys her perfumes from Orlais, he's sure, it's the same air of frost and honeysuckle he got from the Arlessa). He's heard the servants whispering it. Even Eamon knows it, or else he wouldn't get that faintly despairing look in his eyes each time he looked at him, as if he were a dog trying to be housetrained, and Teagan wouldn't be moving into Eamon's bedroom in Redcliffe so that the older man could set up shop permanently as babysitter. Advisor. Whatever.

He would make an _awful _king, and dying a hero would be too perfect to be true – except, oh, the _dying _bit.

He closes his eyes.

And yes, Riordan's said he'll make the final blow and he desperately wants to believe it – but he _knows _what life's been like these past months and he _knows _that with their luck the man will probably trip and break his neck before they even reach Denerim.

_Maker_.

He opens his eyes and he jumps, because Verissa is standing right before him.

She smiles, wanly, and before he can react she reaches forward and lightly runs her finger down the side of his face, cups it in her hand. She's not wearing gloves. Layer upon layer of scar from her unholy magic is pressed against his skin, and her hand is warm, and between one and the other he's not sure he can remember how to breathe.

"When you're king," she murmurs, "what will you do about this?"

"…Er?"

Verissa doesn't comment on this marvelously seductive display of eloquence. Her eyes aren't even amused. Deadly serious. "What will you do," the repeats, slowly, "about this?" She brushes her thumb down the side of his jaw so he can feel the raised pads of scar tissue. And only then does it click.

Oh.

Right.

Because of course there is no 'him and her' to discuss, no 'you and I,' right. _Right. _Because before Alistair met Zevran he'd never _really _understood the phrase 'put a pillow over your head.'

_Right._

"About the blood magic," he manages.

Her lips twitch. "You should let me go," she says quietly. Her eyes search his face. "Surely you wouldn't –"

"_Don't."_

He winces, almost, at the sound of his own voice. It's harsh. Almost unlike him. Verissa blinks at him and it slowly dawns that this is what being a _king _must feel like. What _taking a stand _feels like.

It's…

Well, it's kind of awesome.

"The king shouldn't meddle in the Wardens," she says, voice still low and even. "And the Wardens have always taken assistance no matter where they can –"

"_Don't,"_ he repeats, turning his face away with a major effort of will. He takes a sharp breath through his nose. The Chant is running through his head, again, and oddly enough it's not a verse about justice or maleficarum but the one that begins _steel my heart against temptation_. "I can't – I can't just – it's not just about my being a Templar. I have a _duty_." He nods almost to himself. Her expression hasn't changed one whit; she's just watching them with eyes almost as flat and considering as Morrigan's. "A duty to do what's _right. _For the…the people, I mean."

"To protect them."

"Yes."

"You think I'm dangerous?"

He gives her an incredulous look. "Don't you?"

Verissa laughs softly. "You don't have to do anything," she murmurs. She moves to join him on the edge of the bed, a bit too close for comfort, and as she leans in he has to drag his eyes away from the line of freckles dropping down her collarbone. His hand tightens on the amulet. "You don't have to tell anyone, you know. I might have gotten these scars from…a werewolf. Or a shriek. The Maker is gone, remember, He's not watching."

"_I'll _know."

She shrugs a shoulder. "You will."

But he is taking a _stand, _isn't he, freckles and all be damned. He knows what she's doing. Despite all rumors to the contrary he's not _stupid. _"No," he says, shaking his head, "I…I'm sorry, I _can't._" And he can't. Look at her, that is. "I'll send you to Aeonar."

Verissa tilts her head, the candlelight waking color in her hair and in her eyes. "Jowan didn't go to Aeonar," she says, carefully. It takes him a moment to remember what she's talking about, remember the pitiful little man – mage – _friend – _in Redcliffe's dungeon. "Jowan wasn't even made Tranquil. I got a letter. He tried to break free on the way back to the Tower and when the Templars caught up he fought." There's an odd note to her voice; he finds it odder still that the Jowan he remembers would have run. The man had reminded him more of a mouse than anything. "He fought," she repeats. "He was killed. Stabbed in the back. Bled out."

There is a long, long pause.

"I'll fight," she says.

_**No.**_

"You can't." His mouth has gone dry and he has this sudden, irrational urge to clutch at her hand to make sure she's still there. "You _can't –_"

"I'm telling you now so that you know," she says, voice dead even, grey eyes calm and _horribly _resigned in a way that makes him feel like something scraped from beneath her shoe. "If you try to 'bring me to justice,' I'll fight. I _will, _Alistair. I always have." She smiles at a joke he doesn't know. "I won't roll over and meekly take your judgment. I'm not like Loghain."

"Of course you're not!"

"- And I will_ make_you kill me, Alistair."

She's has always had a talent for freezing him dead in his tracks, and magic or no this time is no exception.

Verissa smiles faintly, reaches out to gently pluck the Chantry amulet from his fingers and set it aside. This barely registers. "That's not what I meant," he manages in a weak voice. He's grasping at straws and he _knows _it, but it's like she's shattered his mind to pieces with that sentence and he's having a hard time thinking. There's an image in his head of her flopped dead on the end of his sword, _not _an abomination and still looking like Verissa with her hands reaching and her pretty grey eyes _pleading. _And the image is _not going away_. "Th-that's not what I meant," he repeats, "I meant – of course you're not like Loghain, that's not the point! The point is – I couldn't ever hurt you, I…"

Doesn't she know that? Hadn't he already proved that on the mountaintop?

"I won't make that choice," he says firmly. "I _can't _make that choice."

"You're king, Alistair. That's what kings do."

"I didn't _want _to be king!" he snaps.

He sees Verissa's eyes flicker. Something passes over her face – sorrow? Disgust (why disgust)? Regret? – and then he sees her make the decision _for _him, like always. "I know," she murmurs. She leans in, scarred fingertips catching his chin and turning his face toward hers. "If you ever…" she stops, and it seems that even _she, _for all her demon-slaying and king-crowning, can't get the words out; her eyes flicker again. He finishes the sentence in his head. It doesn't need to be said.

He has sneaking suspicion that if she said it, it would ring hollow – but then she's pressed her lips to his and the Blight could have swarmed up all around him and he wouldn't have noticed.

"I don't want to die," she breathes between kisses, slipping into his lap so that his hands have nowhere to go but her waist. There's something faintly rehearsed about the words but there's a desperation in her voice, in her mouth. "I _don't _want to die. I want to _live._" She takes the last word and manages to imply dozens of filthy things with it. It's so sudden that he feels _betrayed, _this wasn't how it was supposed to go, he's _missed _something again. He feels dirty. Feels her hands tugging at his clothing and –

_I don't want to die, _wasn't it, and he agrees, which is why he shuts off the warning bells screaming in his brain and kisses her back clumsily and just as fiercely as he can.

_If you ever…_

It's like kissing velvet, if velvet were sort of violent and kept breaking off to bite at your neck, and it's _fantastic – _

…_Then don't let me die._

So why does he feel like he's been used? Isn't this exactly what he'd wanted?

(Because she is a bloodmage, and she is _his, _and she is _beautiful.)_

_I won't let you die._

_. . . . . . . . . . _

He doesn't.


End file.
